Looking back at Eckart Hohmann’s Guest Lecture

This week’s Tuesday, the former president of the Hessian Statistical Office, Eckart Hohmann, was our guest. Within the framework of our Statistics I lecture, he gave a talk on „Die politische Funktion der amtlichen Statistik im Wandel – von der retrospektiven Dokumentation zur Steuerung politischer Interventionen“ (“changes in political function of official statistics – from retrospective documentations to controlling political intervention”).
According to Hohmann, the increased relevance of official statistics, especially with regard to international and supranational institutions, is a new challenge to processes and products of official statistics. Additionally, Hohmann stressed the tension between the political relevance of produced numbers and the necessary independence of official statistics.